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How long it is since I have written to you! You will not, however, I am sure have distrusted on that account the fidelity of my attachment; or ever supposed for a moment that I did not often think of you, and always with warm affection. Wherever I might be, and under whatever circumstances, you...

I write to you, dearest Jane, a little before the time; as the Steamer leaves England not before the first of next month and I usually allow not more than a week for my letter to reach Liverpool, but if I do not write now I may have to wait five or six weeks, as I am going to a place pretty much...

We arrived here safe & sound, dearest Virginia, on saturday, but as I was obliged to write for the Steamer, it is only now, Monday, that I have time to write to you. Tell Cousin Beverley that his recommendations procured me all sorts of attentions from his friends. Mr Bomford was very civil,...

I am very sorry, my dear Mr. Randall, that I can give you no information on the subject of the chasms in Mr. Jefferson’s Correspondence.—I have no copy of Tucker’s Biography at hand to see what mention he makes of them. He wrote whilst my mother was yet living. She, of all persons would have...

Your note inclosing that of Gov. Wise is before me. I most fully appreciate his Excellency’s feelings and views, but as the nearest relative and sole Executor of Mr Jefferson I cannot disregard what I know to have been his cherished domestic feeling, fostered while he lived with a warmth and...

… Mr. Jefferson had suffered for several years before his death, from a diarrhœa, which he concealed from his family, lest it might give them uneasiness. Not aware of it, I was surprised, in conversation with him, in March, 1826, to hear him in speaking of an event likely to occur about midsummer...

Few things could give me more pleasure than to contribute in the smallest degree to the successful termination of the work which at present occupies your time and thoughts. I feel the deepest interest in it.— I will not take up your questions in order, but write what I can, when I can, and as the...

No. 3. I have found it impossible to resume my pen until now when I have an hour or so of leisure before turning my attention to the daily cares & duties which admit of no postponement. The decay of my grandfather’s fortune was owing, as you know, to various causes, but to none more than the...

… The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with a centre-hall twenty feet square, lighted from above. This was a beautiful room, and served as a dining-room....

No. 4.Life at Poplar Forest. Randall’s Life of Jefferson. vol. 3d P. 342. “Mr Jefferson had once owned I believe something like ten thousand acres of fertile land, (to which the name of Poplar Forest was given,) in the county of Bedford near Lynchburg in Campbell Co. I do not know when he began...

Sent to Mr Randall with alterations or additions which I no longer remember, but the whole letter omitted in Mr Randall’s book No. 5. This letter is a continuation of the one of the 18h and I begin by correcting several small, unimportant inaccuracies. My grandfather’s visits to Bedford were...

I have received your letter of the 25th, and but being confined to the house by an attack of measles from which I am not entirely recovered, some little time may elapse before I can comply with your request in reference to the Publisher. It will give me very great pleasure to aid you in any way...

I have been prevented from writing, my dear Mr Randall, by the illness of one of my sons, and the absence of a confidential domestic who has for years been a sort of right hand on all household matters. I resume my pen uncertain how soon I may be compelled to lay it down. You ask for the...

I know not where to begin in reply to your enquiries, my dear Mr Randall, for many subjects press upon me at once. I will therefore take up the one to which I have already alluded. You say in one of your letters “From some remark that dropped from Wormeley, a former slave in your family, as in...

Enclosed you have part of a letter, which I began a week ago. Sudden and severe cold which confined me some days to my bed, prevented me from going on with it: I send it in it’s unfinished state. Yours of the 22nd with it’s enclosures, reached me yesterday. I am not strong enough to write much to...

In my last short letter I told you &c &c. I should not forget to tell you or remind you that after my marriage, just a year before my Grandfather’s death, I was separated from my family, never saw my grandfather again, and my father but once. (After the anecdote of my grandmother’s...

I cannot myself give you any information as to what became of my grandfather’s letters to my mother. She died at Edgehill, October. 1836. I was in Boston at the time of her death and never saw the papers which she left behind. Her father’s letters were no doubt among those papers, and must be in...

For the details of Mr Jefferson’s funeral I must refer you to my brothers and sisters. I was not present nor was my sister Cornelia. She was with me in Boston when in July 1826, we received a summons to hasten on to Virginia if we wished to see our grandfather alive. We set off immediately but...

I have your two letters before me—If I have not sooner replied to them my excuse is simply that I could not. A complication of family cares & duties rendered it impossible for me to write till now. The first Mrs Francis Eppes was a niece of my father’s—the eldest daughter of his sister Jane...

I meant to make a little sketch of my mother’s life, but never got beyond these two pages— Martha Jefferson was the eldest child of Thomas Jefferson and of Martha Wayles, widow of Bathurst Skelton. She was born in January 1772, & lost her mother when she was but ten years old. She was one of...

The House at Monticello, and the Garden. Mr Jefferson made great changes in the house at Monticello after his return from Europe in 1789. He got new ideas of architecture during his residence abroad, and the buildings at Monticello were completely re-modelled under their influence. The house...

a beginning destined never to go farther— Thomas Jefferson It is now one hundred and fifteen years since a respectable family, possessed of competent fortune, resided on a plantation of Virginia situated on the banks of a mountain stream, the Rivanna, a tributary of the noble James, one of the...

The Carr Family. My grandfather’s sister, Martha, married Dabney Carr a man of great merit. He died young but left six children, three sons & three daughters. Their history, of course, is without interest for the public but Mr Randall may like to know something of them. Peter, the eldest son...